W I L L I A M S.

B O A R D M A N

THE RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

ABSTRACT. Since the most promising path to a solution to the problem of skepticism regarding perceptual knowledge seems to rest on a sharp distinction between perceiving and inferring, I begin by clarifying and defending that distinction. Next, I discuss the chief obstacle to success by this path, ":he difficulty in making the required distinction between merely logical possibilities that one is mistaken and the 'real' (Austin) or 'relevant' (Dretske) possibilities which would exclude knowledge. I argue that this distinction cannot be drawn in the ways Austin and Dretske suggest without begging the questions at issue. Finally, I sketch and defend a more radical way of identifying 'relevant' possibilities that is inspired by Austin's controversial suggestion of a paraIlel between saying 'I know' and saying ~I promise': a claim of knowledge of some particular matter is relative to a context in which questions about the matter have been raised.

. To set the stage for my discussion, I will rehearse and clarify a wellknown dispute between A. J. Ayer and J. L. Austin concerning whether perceptual judgments are inferences. Both in his Sense and Sensibilia 1 and in his 'Other Minds', 2 Austin carefully distinguishes recognizing that p from inferring that p. For the purpose of comparing his position with Ayer's, we might put his basic claim in this way: given the way words such as 'recognize' and 'infer' are used outside philosophical discussions, one clearly distinguishes instances of recognizing from instances of inferring. Yet Ayer does not dispute that; rather, he replies that while non-philosophers do make a sharp distinction between the two, it is arbitrary for philosophical purposes. 3 Claims based upon one's having recognized something are sufficiently like claims based upon one's having inferred, Ayer supposes, that it is useful to treat then: as instances of a common category. So the issue is not whether the distinction is recognized outside philosophical circles, but whether it is a defensible and useful one to make. Clearly, Austin insists upon the distinction because he supposes that failing to make it will promote philosophical confusion; indeed, he argues that one traditional problem of skepticism is largely due to this confusion. 4 In his 'Other Minds', Austin tries to suggest how recognizing differs from inferring by showSynthese 94: i45-169, 1993. 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

146

WILLIAM

S. BOARDMAN

ing how the sorts of questions or challenges brought to bear differ between the two sorts of claim: 5 for inferences, one wants a rehearsal of the pieces of evidence and an account of their connections to the judgment; for perceptual claims of recognition, one explores whether the observer had the opportunity to see what he claimed to have seen, whether he had acquired the expertise to recognize the sort of thing he claimed to have seen, and whether the circumstances were free of evident distraction and defect. But his readers' appreciation of these things depends upon their having already granted that the distinction is not arbitrary: since Austin expects us to recognize that the distinction is justifiable, he does not defend it explicitly. After we have compared the two sorts of claim, we will examine a defense of the distinction which accords with Austin's discussion. When we turn to an examination of claims based upon inference and ones made as perceptual judgments of recognition, we discover a number of important similarities which must be addressed by any account which insists nevertheless upon the importance of distinguishing between them. (1) When we explain our perceptual mistakes, we often do so in a way which makes what we did look like an inference. For we like to articulate characters in c o m m o n between what we (mistakenly) thought we saw and what we did (in fact) see which led us to mistake one for the other. And that makes it appear that we reached our (mistaken) judgment through a consideration of those common features. (2) When we explain how we, unlike others present, have been able to see what we did see, we again talk about our judgment as though it were a species of inference. For we point to the one or several characteristics which enabled us to see what we saw. (3) In general, for any perceptual judgment which one makes, there is an inference which might have been made in those circumstances and which 'mimics' or 'emulates' the perceptual judgment. Because of this, if I recognize something which you don't, I may point out characteristics which will enable you to infer that what I claim is true. This fact about perceptual judgments is what enables a seasoned veteran to teach a beginner to recognize what he can recognize. Imagine teaching a child to recognize oak trees: one will first point out the features characteristic

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

147

of oaks - the patterns of their leaves, the way they branch, features of their bark, their usual habitat - in short, the sorts of things from which one's pupil may infer that he is seeing an oak. Eventually from such training the pupil may learn to recognize certain trees as oaks. So a perceptual judgment looks like a very rapid, unexpressed inference. In addition, gaining new information can expand one's ability to recognize or see things, just as it can similarly expand the number of inferences one can make. (4) One's claims about what he sees often incorporate non-perceptual beliefs or things he takes for granted, just as do his inferences. As Dretske has shown, 6 if you ask me whether the water you put on the stove is boiling, I may be able to see that it is even though I cannot see that it is water which is boiling: I take it for granted that the stuff in the pot is water. And if I believe that it is my car which I was seeing through the window, I can properly claim to have seen a red-haired man stem my car. Because it is clear that at least part of such a perceptual judgment requires an inference (an act of theft presenting no unique visual patterns), it is tempting to suppose that the entire judgment must consist of inferences. (5) As an empirical matter of (causal) fact, whenever one recognizes X as a Y or this as an X, he must be enabled to do so in virtue of certain visible or otherwise evident features of the thing he sees or perceives. Even when the observer cannot identify those features which enabled him to perceive what he has perceived, nevertheless there must have been evident features which were causally necessary for his perceptual judgment. If I really do recognize my father as he comes down the street, then had certain of his features been obscured by makeup or obstacles, I would not have recognized him. And so it looks as though whenever one makes a perceptual judgment, there are visual (or sensory) 'cues' which will serve as the 'data' for a reconstruction of the perceptual judgment as an inference. For clearly, in some sense one must have been aware of those 'cues', even if one is unable to articulate them later. Compared to these impressive sorts of similarity between inferences and perceptual judgments, the differences between them look at first to be fairly subtle. In the first place, one can be enabled by virtue of

148

WILLIAM

S. B O A R D M A N

certain characteristics visibly displayed by X to recognize it as a Y without deliberately or consciously having taken notice of those characteristics. While the presence or availability of those 'cues' may be causally necessary to one's seeing what he sees, the observer may nevertheless be wholly unable to list them in any helpful way; whereas, in the case of an inference, he must be able to list or advert explicitly to the data he has used (or, if he has already forgotten them, he must have earlier gone through such a list). One might, of course, try to patch up the comparison by invoking unconsciously used data or implicit reasons, after the manner of Harman, 7 Pitcher, s and perhaps Pollock; 9 but that risks begging the question at issue. Secondly, not only may a person fail to mention the cues which arguably he used in his perceptual recognition, often - when questioned about them specifically - one misdescribes those characteristics. Thus, as is perfectly familiar to us, one's claim to have recognized a friend at a party may be far more reliable than one's response to questions about how the friend looked or what he was wearing. Indeed, it is a crucial feature of one's ability to recognize someone or to see that something is the case that the reliability of his perceptual judgment outstrips his ability to say accurately how he was enabled to see what he saw. a Sometimes, the perceptual judgment in question seems too simple for its relevant 'cues' to be specified: H o w indeed is one enabled to see that the wall is yellow, if seeing is really inferring? Sometimes, the difficulty is that we do not really have a classification scheme of the 'cues' which is as finely graded as the things we are enabled to perceive: one can often tell, from the way the kitchen smells, what is cooking, though one would be unable to describe the odor except as 'the odor of burnt toast' or 'the odor of roast beef'. And sometimes, the difficulty seems to be the enormous complexity behind the judgment. Frequently a person acquires the ability to tell that his spouse or best friend is angry without being able to specify what, in those circumstances, enabled him to tell; and even others who observe him in action may be hard pressed to specify the operative 'cues'. Often a parent can recognize his child at great distances, or from unusual perspectives, or from a largely obscured view, in a way which defies specific explanation. And that is exactly the feature of an exercise of a perceptual ability which makes it distinct from an inference: its reliability outstrips any set of inferences which hopes to 'emulate' or 'replicate' the whole set of perceptual judgments which are exercises of that perceptual ability. 11

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

149

No doubt when one, say, recognizes his child from a partial view, there are causal 'cues' which serve as necessary conditions; the problem in one's or someone else's specifying these cues arises largely from their complexity and redundancy'. Imagine that any of numerous sets of facial features will enable a parent to recognize his child; and suppose that several sets of these features are available to the parent in the current circumstances; then he may be able correctly and reliably to recognize this as his child without being able to identify that set of facial characteristics which enabled him to do so. i2 In fact, because of such redundancy, the parent may falsely suppose that he was able to recognize his child by one characteristic, whereas in fact it was some set of characteristics not including that feature which was the 'but-for' causal condition of his recognition. In this sort of instance, the parent's perceptual judgment ('that is my child') is far more reliable than any attempt by him to infer the conclusion from explicitly noted data: for an inference is only as good as its data, and in this instance the data which the parent is able to articulate do not conclusively support the judgment that he is seeing his child. Moreover, there is no guarantee that an independent investigator could do better: he might confirm the reliability of the parent's repeated recognitions of his child over time and varying circumstances, but be unable to offer sets of causally sufficient 'cues' which would with equal reliability have supported inferences 'replicating' the parent's judgments. This should not be surprising. When certain 'cues' are the causally sufficient conditions for a person's being able to recognize someone, then, for the observer to bring off his recognition, it is not necessary that he be able to articulate or advert to the 'cues'; it is necessary only that they be in fact displayed to him. 13 Unlike an inference, the credibility of a perceptual judgment of recognition does not depend upon one's beliefs about how he was able to arrive at his judgment; all that is required is that he reliably make the judgment upon the presentation of causally necessary conditions - conditions which may go unidentified. Similarly, there are additional conditions which are causally necessary for one to see that this is his child: one's eyes, optic nerves, and brain centers must be in certain states within certain tolerances; and beyond such conditions of the observer, the environment must either possess certain characteristics or anyway lack certain other characteristics. But once again, in order to observe that something is the case, a person need not advert to or use beliefs about these conditions: it is sufficient

150

W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

that the causal conditions be satisfied; the person need not k n o w that they are. Thus, although s o m e perceptual judgments may be 'reconstructed' fairly accurately as inferences, not all can be so 'reconstructed'. For one thing, the use of explicit inferences presupposes the ability to make other judgments non-inferentially. This 'ultimate' dependency of rulefollowing judgments upon 'intuitive' judgments is at the bottom of the common-sense view that inferences rest upon observation: if one cannot, e.g., simply see what the data are, then he will not be able to infer things from them. And for another, we may be far more confident about a perceptual judgment's reliability than about any identification of its 'implicit data'. Just as inferences are liable to go wrong, so one's exercise of perceptual abilities is fallible. To be sure, sometimes what makes a perceptual judgment 'go wrong' m a y be analogous to the corresponding flaw in an inference: a background belief may have been false, or some of the crucial 'cues' may have been obscured, or sometimes one may have been incautious or hasty. But sometimes, unlike instances of inferences, no one can say why, on that particular occasion, a person's ability to recognize things such as this failed him. We are now in a position to understand why, as Austin points out in his 'Other Minds', challenges and questions pertaining to a perceptual claim of recognition follow a different pattern from ones pertaining to an inference. If one wants to challenge or gauge the credibility of an inference, he needs to look at the data used and at the grounds which related them to the sort of conclusions drawn. But if one wants to challenge or scrutinize a perceptual judgment of recognition, one likely has no explicit record to consider. And since the reliability of the perceptual judgment may outstrip that of any inference suggested as its 'replication', examining a 'replication' may not be an accurate way of evaluating the credibility of the perceptual judgment. Instead, one must look to the past performances of the perceiver - to see whether it is likely that he has developed the ability which he claims to have used on this occasion, and to see whether this occasion was the sort to have permitted its reliable exercise. (In a closely analogous way, when we want to determine whether Jones' tennis playing on this occasion was skillful or merely lucky, we look to whether he has had the opportunity to develop such skill and whether the present circumstances were propitious for its exercise; we do n o t demand that Jones cite a set of explicit rules for playing tennis, since that will not in general be a reliable

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

151

indicator of what we wish to assess.) After all, when we question a person who claims perceptual knowledge, we want to find out whether the person probably did see what he supposed he recognized, not whether he would have been able to infer what he saw from some explicit set of data. Thus we find Austin's insistence on the distinction between recognizing and inferring to be fully justified. As a result, Austin is supported in his further claim that certain sorts of facts about the perceiver and about the thing perceived need not be substantiated by the perceiver in order for it to be correctly asserted that he has seen what he supposed himself to have seen. Although these items would be part of the data of an inference which 'emulates' the perceptual judgment, the perceiver's grounds for believing them are not relevant to whether he saw what he said he saw: he did not claim to have inferred, but to have recognized. Thus, the distinction between recognizing and inferring forestalls one traditional entrance of the problem of skepticism. For Jf seeing really were the making of an inference, then the observer would certainly have to include in his grounds for his perceptual judgment some details concerning these 'cues'; and he would also need to have subsidiary evidence tending to substantiate such details. And since one scarcely ever has relevant and conclusive evidence about such things, traditional skeptical problems would consequently assert themselves and force the denial that one ever really does see such a thing as that X was at the party. But since recognizing is not the making of an inference, these details are not data which the observer needs to have adverted to and made sure of; instead, they are causal conditions which simply must have been satisfied - independently of what the observer knew or reasonably believed. Indeed, the observer can make an inference which goes quite in the opposite direction: realizing that he has seen X at the party, and realizing that doing so required a host of causal conditions to have been satisfied, he is able to infer that these conditions must have been satisfied. . We shall be able to appreciate the special features of perceptual recognition which explain its differences from inference if we see it as an instance of the wider category of 'intuitive' judgments - ones which do not bring rules to bear. (While this discussion will try to make the

152

WILLIAM

S. BOARDMAN

different kinds of judgments clear by concentrating on the extremes of fully intuitive judgments as contrasted with inferential judgments, we need to remember that there are many 'mixed' instances. When, for example, one claims to have recognized a goldfinch 'from its color and its bill', one is articulating a general range of characteristics which enabled him to identify the bird as a goldfinch: like the corresponding instance of inference, if goldfinches have no distinguishing sort of bill, then the claim of recognition fails.) To acquire an ability to make intuitive judgments, one typically must be trained through apprenticeship by someone who has the intuitive ability already (or must have acquired the ability through much experience). The pupil acquires the intuitive ability by having large numbers of specific judgments corrected or confirmed by the master; he subsequently acquires, e.g., 'an ear' for language, 'a nose' for argument, 'an eye' for fashion. Even when his training is aided by the use of some explicit rules (as students of English are aided by 'rules of grammar'), his eventual ability to make reliable judgments 'by ear' can exceed his capacity and that of his teacher to articulate explicit, general rules which decide those cases correctly. Often, the development of a set of comprehensive, explicit rules is dependent upon and subsequent to the existence of someone's intuitive ability to make the relevant judgments. For example, long before Aristotle or other logicians, people were able to distinguish good arguments from poor ones on a case-by-case basis; later, rules of logic were devised to allow a fairly mechanical and systematic identification of valid arguments. Such rules enable someone who has not mastered the intuitive enterprise to make judgments whose reliability rivals those of the expert. But, often, the set of explicit rules is never as reliable in the huge variety of instances as is the expert's intuitive ability. (Notice how any given system of formal logic can deal with only a fairly narrow type of valid argument - never with the whole range of them at once; for the resulting complexity of rules dealing with all valid arguments would be overwhelming.) Thus, even if we could 'reconstruct' some intuitive abilities as the mechanical application of explicit rules, we could not 'reconstruct' all. Some are simply too complicated; and, anyway, the use of explicit rules presupposes the ability to make other judgments intuitively. The special advantage of an intuitive ability is that it allows farreaching yet reliable extrapolations to be made on the meager basis of relatively few instances which have served as the basis of one's instruc-

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

153

tion. Inferential judgment, on the contrary, is firmly tethered to those conditions specified in its explicit rules. Thus in learning to recognize X in circumstances where he is wearing his hat and walking, one may thereby acquire the ability to recognize him even when he is seated and hatless. In contrast, if we have a list of characteristics which uniquely identify X and only some but not all of the items are satisfied, then we can infer neither that it is X nor that it is not.14 However, intuitive abilities possess a special disadvantage: there may be hidden limitations on the circumstances in which they can be reliably exercised. If I have learned to recognize goldfinches while in Britain, I have not thereby acquired the ability to recognize them in a rain forest inhabited by other species of bird resembling the goldfinch in ways for which the population of British birds has not prepared me. Yet I might not realize that (in this different environment) I may not properly identify the bird before me as a goldfinch (even if it happens to be a goldfinch). In contrast, if I were working from a complete and explicit inventory of the characteristics of goldfinches, I would - even in a rain forest - be able to identify the bird before me as a goldfinch, supposing that I ascertained the inventory to be satisfied. Thus, while the tether of an intuitive ability is more elastic than that of an inference, it is liable to break without warning. As a practical matter, the hidden limitations of intuitive abilities become a difficulty when, e.g., one is called upon to identify one's assailant from a police line-up: realizing that he has the ability to discriminate the culprit from all the other people who were in the park at the time may mislead one into supposing that he has the rather different ability to identify the culprit from some group of people randomly chosen from a much larger population. What makes this familiar limitation a philosophical difficulty is that one may not be abte to tell when the current circumstances are significantly or sufficiently unlike the ones in which he acquired his ability that he cannot count on its reliable exercise. The liability of a perceptual judgment to fail to be knoMedge does not, by itself, support a thoroughgoing skeptical challenge to seeing as a means of knowing. That one sometimes mistakenly supposes that he recognizes this X as Y does not prove that in different, more customary circumstances he must fail to recognize an X as a Y: my subsequent bird watchings, for example, might be restricted to the British environment. After all, one's perceptual judgment is an exercise of a skill

154

W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

which, like any other skill, might be successful only in certain circumstances - like that of a tennis player who is an expert on clay courts but not on grass. Moreover, as Dretske urges, is even if one's ability to see that X is Y is restricted to a narrow set of circumstances, nevertheless, its exercise does not require him to know that he is in favorable circumstances; it suffices that he be in them. The threat of skepticism does arise, however, when we consider a further point. If we concede that a person's perceptual judgments are liable to error in circumstances which are abnormal or atypical compared to the circumstances in which one has acquired the ability to make that sort of perceptual judgment, then we can argue that some of his perceptual judgments of this sort nevertheless qualify as knowledge only if we can distinguish abnormal from normal circumstances independently of whether they permit success. Only if we can do that can we distinguish the fortuitously correct perceptual judgments which occur in abnormal circumstances from the knowledge obtained through perception in the normal circumstances. When the perceptual judgment that X is Y is made in abnormal circumstances, it will require supplementary knowledge in order for it to qualify as knowledge: this is because abnormal circumstances for a perceptual judgment are those in which the application of one's ability to recognize that X is Y fails to rule out other relevant possibilities to Xs being Y. For example, if I subsequently try to apply my goldfinch spotting skills while in a rain forest, I shall then need to exclude the possibility that I am seeing a bird which, though not belonging to the class of non-goldfinches in the British population of birds (the normal circumstances for the exercise of my skill), nevertheless is not a goldfinch. And again, if my father's twin, whom I have never met, is in town, then despite my confidence that it is my father whom I see from some distance, and even though it is in fact my father, nevertheless, I may not see that it is; for here my apparent recognition is consistent with its being my father's twin whom I see. Notice in these examples that the obstacle to my gaining knowledge by recognition is that although I have learned to discriminate Ys from a familiar set of non-Ys, I have not learned to discriminate them from the different set or kind of non-Ys relevant to these unaccustomed situations. In these atypical circumstances, I could know that I was seeing a goldfinch (or, my father) only if I had supplementary knowledge eliminating the further alternatives. Thus to meet the general skeptical challenge, one must be able to

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

155

distinguish, in a way which is not arbitrary, those circumstances in which a perceptual judgment needs to be accompanied by supplementary information eliminating relevant alternative possibilities from those circumstances in which a perceptual judgment requires no such supplen mentation in order to be knowledge. And so, it is required that relevant possibilities not arise in every circumstance: only facts of the situation can raise relevant alternative possibilities which need to be eliminated in order for one to see that X is I1. In particular, as both Austin and Dretske insist, the mere conceivability of alternative possibilities must not necessitate supplementary information. Thus, for example, though it is logically possible that the person I see is a clone of my father, secretly contrived by invading Martians, nevertheless, I need not know that this possibility is not realized in order to recognize him as my father. Although it is tempting to fall in with this insistence that we distinguish between circumstances where real possibilities arise and those where they do not, neither Austin nor Dretske shows how to draw such a distinction without begging crucial questions. The difficulty is to settIe, without being arbitrary or ad hoc, just what kinds of facts and what selection of them do create a 'real' or 'relevant' possibility, one which marks the circumstances as abnormal or atypical. For what at first appears to be a mere conceivability can often be restated so that it seems to be a 'genuine' possibility, "actually realizable", in Dretske's words, "in the nuts and bolts of the particular system in question". ~6 And, as a result, it is difficult to show that an), circumstance is not abnormal. Suppose it to be a fact that although my father has no twin, he has living in Timbuktu a Doppelgiinger - a look-alike~ Then does that fact create a 'real' possibility that it is my father's double whom I am seeing now (as I look down the street in Appleton, Wisconsin)? If the actual existence of a look-alike creates a 'real' possibility that I might be mistaken in my judgment that I see my father, then, since I possess no supplementary information excluding that possibility, we shall have to say that I do not see that it is my father approaching - even though it is him, his Doppelgiinger currently being in Timbuktu. Using this pattern of identifying 'real' possibilities, we could raise skeptical challenges virtually in every case where someone claims to see that X is 17. For example, it is surely a fact that some Hollywood make-up artist has the ability to disguise somebody so that I would mistake him (at this dis-

156

WILLIAM

S. BOARDMAN

tance) for my father; whether such a person has had the opportunity and desire to deceive me is a matter about which I have no supplementary knowledge. Indeed, the recent facts of biological discovery might even make it actually possible that with great sums of money and patience a team of scientists could clone a genetic copy of my father. The problem is that there are always numerous subsets of facts which, by themselves - in the absence of further facts - would serve as relevant evidence that one is mistaken. 17 If the existence of such a subset of facts is sufficient to raise 'relevant' alternative possibilities, then the claim to knowledge of every perceptual judgment unalloyed with supplementary knowledge of the further facts would be compromised. But, clearly, the same considerations would prevent one from knowing any subset of facts, since there would always be still further facts that one would need to know first. On the other hand, we might insist upon including such further facts along with the subclasses as defining "the circumstances which in fact prevailed on this occasion". 18 Thus, for example, even though my father's Doppelgdnger exists, it is a further fact that he is currently in Timbuktu and so not available for my inspection. Accordingly, we might say that my mistaking my father's look-alike for him was not a 'genuine' possibility under 'the prevailing circumstances'. But now the problem is that since 'the prevailing circumstances' include all of the facts which prevented or were inconsistent with the realization of alternative possibilities, this option would serve as a pattern for making every perceptual judgment which happens to be correct an instance of knowledge: returning to the example where my father's twin is in town, it is a further fact that the twin is currently in another part of town and so not available to my scrutiny (and so, my having mistaken him for my father would not be a genuinely alternative possibility under 'the prevailing circumstances'); and when I see the goldfinch in the rain forest, it is a further fact that no spurious goldfinches are on the tree to which my eyes are turned. In general, whenever an alternative possibility is not realized, there will always be facts which either prevented or were inconsistent with its realization. Nor is there any nonarbitrary way to single out the truly relevant facts of the prevailing circumstances (my father's twin is in town; my father's Doppelgdnger is not) from those which are not truly relevant (my father's twin is in another part of town; the spurious goldfinches are on other trees). Thus, it seems futile to search for a principled, non-arbitrary way to

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

157

distinguish 'abnormal' from 'normal' circumstances. The problems 19 for this sort of account are much deeper than Dretske allows when he (quite properly) acknowledges "flexibility" and "plasticity" in the notion of "relevant alternative possibilities". 2 . What is required to block the general skeptical challenge to perceptual knowledge is something more radical than a distinction between the customary circumstances of perceptual judgment and atypical ones. Surely Austin is correct in arguing that while it is the purpose of a claim of knowledge of p to exclude some specific ways of being mistaken about p, no knowledge claim is intended to exclude all conceivable ways of being mistaken. And so the host of skeptical challenges to a claim of knowledge is often frivolous: as Austin says, "Enough is enough".21 What refutes a person's claim to know that p is a showing that 'p' is probably false or that there is "some concrete reason to suppose that [he] may be mistaken in this case"; 22 the inherent liability of a human to mistake does not prevent one from knowing things. But if a person's knowing that p does not require him to be able to meet every conceivable challenge, then we ought to be able to specify which challenges he must be able to meet in order (to be correctly said) to know that p. In other words, if 'enough is enough', how do we determine what is enough? I suggest that when a person claims knowledge, he does so in a context where some specific difficulties in supposing that p have been raised explicitly or implicitly: it is these difficulties which both make a claim of knowledge appropriate and also determine what counts as 'enough' to be correctly said in this context to know that p. Warnock has attacked philosophers who use, as I do, the notion of a claim of knowledge as a central element in their accounts of knowing; he accuses such philosophers of greatly exaggerating the importance of claims to know. 23 To escape Warnock's criticisms, we may distinguish roughly between two sorts of circumstances in which we speak of someone's knowing that p or seeing that X is y.24 In what we may style a biographical context, the question motivating the discussion is the explanation or moral appraisal of a person's conduct. In this type of context, the interrogators have already discovered the truth of 'p' or that X is Y; what they want to determine is why the person acted the

158

WILLIAM

S. B O A R D M A N

way he did - and whether he was, at the time he acted, in a reasonable position to act in accordance with p's being true. Suppose that a particular bridge was in danger of imminent collapse, and yet a supervisor sends a workman across it to fetch a tool; then the question whether the supervisor is to blame for the workman's subsequent death or injury will focus on whether the supervisor knew or could see that the bridge was unsafe. If, for instance, the supervisor had merely been aware of various rumors regarding the bridge's lack of safety but was reasonable in dismissing them, then he would not be to blame for the tragedy. In biographical circumstances, we distinguish between a person's knowing that the bridge was unsafe, and his having been in ignorance of the bridge's lack of safety. The distinction between 'he knew' and 'he ought to have known' is not very interesting in this type of circumstance, since either makes him blameworthy; indeed, it is worth noting that lawyers frequently alternate the two expressions indifferently. Even the distinction between 'he knew' and 'he believed' is not very interesting: for his inability to have claimed to know that the bridge was in imminent danger would not serve as an excuse or explanation so long as he had supposed that the bridge was in imminent danger of collapse. Again, when we are explaining or predicting a person's acts, the distinctions are treated in the same way: the general who fears that the enemy 'knows' of the planned invasion on Tuesday would not (and should not) be mollified by a showing that the enemy generals could not be entitled to claim knowledge of the plans - since they have only guessed at them; it is sufficient corroboration of his fears if they are prepared to act in accordance with the proposition 'our enemy is planning an invasion on Tuesday'. It is in these biographical circumstances where one confesses and admits to having known, rather than claims to have knownY But there is another sort of context where the interrogators have not already discovered whether 'p' is true, and where the question motivating the discussion is whether 'p' may be accepted as established or certified. In what we may call certification circumstances, to talk of knowing or having recognized or having seen that p is to make or endorse a claim that p - to advance 'p' as established, in contrast to its being highly probable (though less than conclusive), a reasonable bet, or only a guess. Here the truth of 'p' is being claimed together with the person's being in a special position to make the strongest sort of

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

159

claim. It is with certification circumstances that epistemological discussions, including the present one, are chiefly concerned. Without a special context, the question 'Do you know that X is )1.9' is incomplete. Apart from artificial examples coined by philosophers, the question would be asked only in circumstances where a problem with the supposition that X is Y or with the speaker's possession of that information was explicitly stated or contextually apparent: 'Given that this is too early in the spring for goldfinches, how do you know it was a goldfinch?'. 'Given that your father's twin is in town, how do you know it was your father?'. Again, the questioner might make it clear that he had heard the prevalent rumors bruiting that p, and ask whether the person knows that p: in such a case the gravamen is that the assertion of p is merely an unsubstantiated rumor. Accordingly, statements of the form 'I know that p', 'I saw that p', and 'He recognized X as being Y', should normally be viewed as responses to specific sorts of worries. 26 Apart from such suggestions of a specific sort of worry', a declaration of knowledge is vacuous, though it may be made substantive by our presupposing some sort of worry as understood by the speaker. In this respect, Austin was perfectly correct in noting the similarity of a declaration of knowledge to a guarantee: 27 a guarantee is not made absolutely, but against contingencies of poor workmanship, poor design, liability to misuse by the clumsy, liability to the ravages of long and hard use. One can guarantee that a product wilt continue to work during the worst sort of electrical storm or after a typically savage attack by a four-year-old, but one cannot meaningfully simply guarantee a product unless some range of usual, customary defects or liabilities is understood. No doubt the relativity" of guarantees can escape notice because their audience is usually acquainted with the sorts of liabilities to which a particular kind of product is subject, and so has some idea which of those liabilities one could reasonably expect a manufacturer to minimize or extinguish. In a parallel way, when a speaker is prepared to urge the truth of 'p', the context usually makes clear to him what his hearers consider to be the obstacle(s) to accepting 'p' as true. Thus, as Ebersote points out, 2s in the absence of a special context, it is outrageous for one to say that he knows this or that. It isn't that his statement would be false; rather, it would be empty merely an emphatic way of saying 'p'. What makes it appropriate, then, for someone to say that he knows

160

WILLIAM

S. B O A R D M A N

that X is Y is the doubt regarding Xs being Y which has been expressed or suggested. And when, in those circumstances, a person says that he knows or sees that p, he is saying that he can respond definitively to that doubt as being groundless or can certify 'p' notwithstanding it. Thus, suppose that the worry about whether it is my father who is ringing the doorbell is that his schedule would prevent its being him. Then perhaps I am able to counter the doubt with the information that he had told me earlier that he would take a break to visit this morning. Or perhaps I have recognized him as he walked toward the front window. Either of these replies defends the assertion, that it is my father, against the suggested reason for doubt; in either case I may properly claim knowledge. But if, on the other hand, the worry is that it might be my father's twin or Doppelgiinger who has come to meet me, then I shall not be able to dismiss that doubt by saying that I recognize him as my father. Thus to say 'I know that p' or 'I see that p' is not to give an absolute guarantee that p: one is stating that he is in a position relative to specific worries to settle definitely the question whether p. He may be placed in such a position by various sorts of circumstances: he may have conclusive evidence; he may have recognized the fact; he may have received assurances from someone else who k n e w . 29 The appropriateness and success of his grounds will depend both upon the nature of the worries which were raised and on the circumstances in which he was placed relative to p. But in any case, whether such a worry needs to be taken seriously (and so issues in 'I know that p' or 'I see that p' or, instead, 'I would bet that p') will depend upon whether there are grounds in the current circumstances which suggest the likelihood of the worry's being true. Imagine that upon my looking out the window and announcing to my wife that my father is coming up the path, she replies whimsically, 'Perhaps it is only a Doppelgdnger': although I cannot then give the assurance that I recognize my father, neither must I concede reasonable doubt. A doubt about whether p does not properly arise upon a whimsy. It is otherwise if we have recently heard reports from our neighbors of their being astonished by a look-alike to my father: then the worry is legitimate, and I must admit that I do not (at this distance, anyway) see that it is my father. However, a claim of knowledge is unlike a guarantee, in that beyond one's being entitled to claim to know that p under the circumstances, 'p' must actually be true in order for one to know that p. When a

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

161

product fails in precisely the circumstances in which the manufacturer guaranteed it, it is nonetheless true that the manufacturer did guarantee the product; but when a person claims to know that p in circumstances where he is able to defend the assertion of 'p' against specific contextual worries, if it nevertheless transpires that 'p' is false, then the person did not know that p.30 Imagine, then, that in circumstances about which my wife and I have been kept ignorant (e.g., my father has carefully planned a surprise meeting of his twin brother and my family), my father's twin approaches my house and hears this dialogue between me and my wife: 'Put on the kettle, would you? My father is here'. 'It can't be your father - he's still at work: remember, he's on the morning shift this month'. 'I know it's him - I see him'. In such circumstances, my uncle is in a position to be amused by my false claim of knowledge. One's being warranted under the circumstances in claiming to know that p is only a necessary condition of one's actually knowing it. On the other hand, imagine that in the same circumstances - as before, my father has planned the surprise meeting - it is in fact nay father who approaches the house, his twin brother remaining unseen in the car parked by the curb. In this case, the claim of knowledge expressed to my wife is true: here I am in a position to surmount my wife's objections to my identification of the visitor as my father; and, moreover, it is my father. The further fact of my father's twin being nearby is irrelevant to whether I know what I claim to know, as are additional facts such as that my father has a Doppelganger (residing in Timbuktu), who, were he approaching the house, would be mistaken by me for my father. One is probably unsatisfied at first glance with these protestations of irrelevancy. But that is due, I think, to a confusion between two sets of contexts: there is, first, the context in which the person in the example assures his wife (against the worry that the father's work schedule prevents his being the visitor) that he sees that the visitor is his father; but there is the further circumstance of the reader who, looking at the example from a God's-eye view, has information which the wife in the example does not - that the father's twin is in the vicinity. If the reader imagines himself in the example and invested with this further information, then he may imagine that the relevant context contains the additional worry - that the visitor might be his father's twin; and, as I have said earlier, if that worry were properly raised, the husband could not reasonably claim to know that the visitor

162

WILLIAM

S. B O A R D M A N

is his father. Yet, on the contrary, the additional information possessed by the reader does not define the context in which the claim of knowledge should be judged. In effect, the person in the example is imagined as being queried in two separate ways: 'Given that your father is supposed to be on his morning shift, can you be sure that it is him?' and 'Given that your father's twin is in the vicinity, can you be sure that this is your father?'. A legitimate form of this sort of supplementing of context occurs in a court of law when new information comes to light of which an eyewitness had been ignorant: to the question now put to him, 'Can you (now) be sure that it was your father whom you saw (in light of the currently disclosed fact that your uncle was in the neighbor-hood)?', the person must reply that he might be mistaken in supposing that it was his father whom he saw, even though he originally entertained no such qualms. He must now testify that he thinks he saw his father, not that he recognized him; he cannot endorse his earlier claim to know that it was his father. Potential confusion between distinct sets of contexts is abetted by the subtle linguistic complexities of the relationships between present and past tenses of the verb 'know', and between first-person claims to know and indirect reports of such claims. When one says 'I knew' or 'he knew' or 'he knows', one is not merely reporting that X was or is in a position to claim knowledge; one is endorsing it as one's own current claim. When I say 'I knew that p', I thereby claim to know that p now; and when I say 'He knew that p', once again I claim to know that p. But if the current circumstances involve a further worry concerning whether p - which did not arise in the context in which the earlier claim occurred, one cannot endorse that claim (one cannot say, 'X knew that p') without thereby implying that X was in a position to overcome this further worry. Thus, when the context has changed, 'I knew' does not work simply as the past tense of 'I know', and 'he knew' does not merely report the truth of another person's earlier claim, 'I know'. For that reason, a person possessing the additional information that the father's twin was in the vicinity may not say that the husband knew that the visitor was his father: for that would falsely imply that the husband had been in a position to overcome the potential objection to his identification, 'How can you be sure that it is not your father's twin?'. Nevertheless, the husband's claim was appropriate and true. To deny this would be to plunge immediately into the problems which we surveyed at the close of Section 2 above: it would be to demand

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

163

supplementary knowledge excluding every mistake whose possibility is supported by some subset of facts. For it is not only the fact of the twin's visit of which the husband is ignorant; he is also ignorant of the Doppelgiinger who resides in Timbuktu, of the Hollywood make-up artist, and of numerous other facts which - were he to know them selectively without knowing further facts inconsistent with the alternative possibilities they raise - would prevent him from ever being entitled to claim knowledge. When we consider the context in which someone claims to know something, we are frequently in possession of new information which was not available in the original circumstances. This new information raises alternative possibilities to p's being the case which we should want to exclude before we might now claim to know that p. But our consequent inability to endorse a claim to know that p which was made in the original circumstances does not show that that claim was false. It merely shows that we do not now stand in the shoes of the original claimant. Perhaps it will help to notice that this peculiarity of endorsement is not confined to knowledge claims. When we consider a person who lives in different social and cultural circumstances from our own, we may find ourselves unable to endorse his view of his duties and obligations, since they are conditioned by institutional rules inconsistent with our own; and yet we sometimes want to admit not only that such a person did what reasonably s e e m e d right to him but that it was right for him then and there. Yet frequently we cannot directly say that what he did was right, since doing so endorses his judgment from the social context in which we stand. Thus we find difficulties about how to phrase our claim that his judgment that he had a duty to resort to infanticide or sacrifice to the gods was correct in his circumstances. Nevertheless, such difficulties ought not to lead us to imagine that one's moral duties are absolute, independent of the institutional framework of the society in which one lives. Similarly, the obstacles to endorsing one's earlier claim of knowledge or someone else's claim of knowledge ought not to make us imagine that true claims of knowledge are absolute, independent of the context in which they are put forth. But will this conception of claims of knowledge as relative to their contexts help to turn aside the skeptical attacks with which Austin and Dretske were concerned when they tried to distinguish between the normal and abnormal circumstances of perception? Imagine that having

164

WILLIAM

S. B O A R D M A N

learned to recognize goldfinches in a British environment, I subsequently try to apply my skills while visiting a rain forest. Later, I report to friends that a goldfinch was actually eating a banana. 'But', they query, 'are you sure it wasn't a robin? We've heard of robins eating bananas, but never goldfinches'. Against the suggestion that the bird might have been a robin, my British training stands me in good stead, for I have learned to distinguish goldfinches from robins. And so I can properly (and truly - if it was indeed a goldfinch) claim to have recognized it as a goldfinch. But suppose, instead, that one of my friends, who is more sophisticated about the inhabitants of the rain forest, asks me whether it mightn't have been a 'spurious goldfinch' (whose Latin name he pronounces to me): now I must reply that I am not sure, that I haven't learned to distinguish those sorts of birds. Or perhaps if he adds that these 'spurious goldfinches' have red wing bars, I shall have noticed the bird's wing and will now be able to know that it was a goldfinch. Again, changing the example, suppose that having been mugged in a park, a person now surveys suspects in a line-up. If he identifies 'number three' as the culprit, he is claiming something like this: to see that it is 'number three' as opposed to the others in the line-up. While he is not merely claiming a similarity between the culprit and 'number three' ('number three' might be the member of the lineup most resembling the culprit without the victim's supposing that he is the culprit), nevertheless, his claim is - if the present account be correct - more limited than an absolute claim of identification. If a new worry is posed - that the culprit might actually be someone absent from the line-up who looks very much like 'number three' - then I don't really see how the earlier line-up identification could reasonably be expected to rule that out. The witness must reply that this is possible: subsequent investigation must center on how likely this possibility is. If a thorough investigation finds no evidence of there having been someone else in the vicinity at the time who looked much like 'number three', then the witness may properly claim to have recognized 'number three' as the culprit. But, on the other hand, if the evidence suggests that someone who looks like 'number three' was in the vicinity at the time in question, then the witness must retract his earlier claim. Subsequently, the witness may have an opportunity to look at this new suspect: on this occasion, he may be able to see that the new suspect is not the culprit - perhaps the new suspect has a prominent mole which the witness would certainly have noticed had the culprit been so

RELATIVITY

OF PERCEPTUAL

KNOWLEDGE

165

endowed, or perhaps the witness simply sees that this new suspect is not the culprit. Such supplementary information would allow the witness to reinstate his original claim to have recognized 'number three' as the culprit. When we turn to one's eyewitness identification of one's own father or child or close friend, the identification is typically much stronger than that of a recent mugger simply because one has spent so much time and effort learning to distinguish one's relatives or friends from a large variety of people. Yet even here it would be a mistake to imagine that such an identification might be absolute; even this kind of identification depends upon the worries which are raised in the context. A parent might, in one context, recognize perfectly well the first-born of his twin children; yet when a new worry arises that the second-born might recently have undergone plastic surgery to disguise those subtle features which formerly distinguished him from his twin, then the parent will not have recognized him as his first-born (even though it turns out that the twin has not had such surgery). So whether the parent has actually recognized his first-born or has only correctly guessed his identity will depend upon which worries had been raised in the context. Perhaps it will be thought that in arguing for a conception of claims of knowledge as relative I am in effect giving up any useful notion of knowledge, much as do replies to skepticism which construe knowledge as highly probable belief. I submit that the present account does not do this. Like Austin, I want to defend a conception of knowledge which underlies the actual ways we talk of knowing outside philosophical theories. Knowledge of something/s definitive, on my account, though it is definitive against specific worries. This does not cheapen the notion of knowledge, though it does acknowledge specific limits or boundaries. For despite acknowledging such limits, it recognizes a qualitative difference between knowing or seeing that p and merely being convinced of that p on the basis of what one sees. The importance of context does not erode the distinction between knowledge and warranted belief. The main differences between the present account and those of Austin and Dretske are motivated by practical considerations. I contend that the features of context which limit knowledge must be facts of which the perceiver has some notice or warning, as he has of worries raised on the occasion of his claim of knowledge, rather than details of the circumstances of perception of which he might have no notice whatever. For if there are boundaries to knowledge, then only if one can anticipate

166

W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

them can one's claim of knowledge carry practical weight. Thus, I would modify an account of knowledge such as Dretske's in the following way: a person, K, knows that s is F relative to a contextually specified worry, w = K's belief that s is F is caused (or causally sustained) by the information that s is F which eliminates or rules out worry w. 31 Finally, we may note a further, distinct element in the context to which knowledge claims are relative: they are relative to a threshold of conclusiveness which shifts according to what is expressly at stake in the situation. 32 A particular observation or a particular set of evidence may entitle me to say to one who wishes to avoid the inconvenience of walking up four flights of stairs for naught that I know X is in the building - I recently noticed him walking up the stairs; and if that was in fact X, I do know. Yet if the question is whether X might have been the murderer of his fourth floor competitor, then that same observation may entitle me to say only that I believe it was X whom I saw mounting the stairs; in this different context, I may not know, even though I have the same reasons for p which permitted me to know in the former example. Because a claim of knowledge is relative in the ways I have indicated, it cannot always be transposed from one context to another. Suppose I speak, in succession, to someone who doubts that p for one reason, and then to someone who doubts it upon an entirely different ground: my candid (and perhaps true) assurances to the first person that I saw that p do not settle what should be my candid reply to the second. Thus, no attempt to set forth the conditions of perceptual knowledge which assumes them to be independent of the specific contexts in which claims of knowledge are made can succeed in accounting for one's knowledge. For many of the things one sees or otherwise knows are known only relative to specific obstacles or problems or doubts given in a particular context which occasioned the claim of knowledge.

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 Austin (1962, pp. 115-24). Austin (1961, pp. 44-84). Ayer (i970, pp. 127-30). Austin (1962, pp. I12-24 and pp. 137-42). Austin (1961, pp. 47-54).

R E L A T I V I T Y OF P E R C E P T U A L K N O W L E D G E

167

6 Dretske (1969, pp. 93-112). 7 Harman (1973, pp. 175-76 and 183-86). 8 Pitcher (1971, pp. 97-112). 9 Potlock (1974, pp. 60-64). lo Austin (1961, p. 53). It may be that perceptual and perceptual-like skills are sometimes even further from the reach of inference: in discussing recent research on covert awareness. Alan Cowey writes that a study by Goodale and others demonstrates with arresting clarity that not all complex computations involved in the neural representation of shape, size and orientation are accessible to conscious judgments of these object qualities. It is as if conscious awareness operated on a need-to-know basis, and that many neural events such as those governing prehension can occur without awareness in parallel with others of a similar nature that lead to conscious awareness. (Cowey 1991, p. 103) 11 See the discussion of 'Coding and Content', in Dretske (1981, pp. 171-89). Dretske writes: What endows some systems with the capacity to occupy states which have, as their semantic content, facts about some distant source is the plasticity of the system for extracting information about a source from a variety of signals. The system, as it were, ignores the particular messenger in order to respond to the information delivered by the messenger . . . . [The semantic] structure itself carries no information about the means of its production (about the messenger). (Ibid., p. 187) 12 See Dretske's ingenious discussion of primary and secondary representations in Dretske (1981, pp. 156-65). 13 Dretske (1981, pp. 111-23). 14 Explicit rules can also be limited to specific circumstances: one might, for instance, give a new employee a list of characteristics which suffice to identify the boss out of those persons working with the company, although the characteristics would not suffice to pick him out of all his fellow residents of Manhattan. 15 Dretske (1969, pp. 124-39). 16 Dretske (1981, p. 131 - with minor interpolations). 17 See the example of the Grabit family in Lehrer and Paxon (1969, pp. 228-29). 18 Dretske (1971, pp. 6-7; italics omitted). Dretske adds that the details of these conditions must include nothing which is logically or causally dependent upon the fact of which one claims knowledge. 19 The difficulty is similar to what Richard Feldman calls "The Problem of Generality" in his 'Reliability and Justification' (1985, po 161). 20 Dretske (1981, pp. 133-34); I will return in my penultimate paragraph to this distinct sort of context-relativity. zl Austin (1961, p. 52). 22 Austin (1961, p. 66). 23 Warnock (1962, pp. 19-32). 24 See Hanfling (1988, pp. 40-55). 2s Warnock (1962, p. 22). 26 This might be the sort of thing contemplated by Annis when he writes of justification

168

W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

as being "relative to the issue-context"; see Annis (1978, pp. 213-19). But his use of a defeasibility requirement (on p. 217) suggests that he does not see claims of knowledge as being relative in the way I am suggesting. 27 Austin (1961, pp. 67-71). 2s Ebersole (1972, pp. 186-221). z9 See Welbourne (1979); but notice that such assurances will be relative to the context in which they were given. 3o See Harrison (1962, p. 453). 3a See Dretske's original formula (Dretske 1981, p. 86). My bold face addition implies that there need be no such thing as the information that s is F: frequently there is, instead, the information that s is F rather than G, the information that s is F rather than H, and so forth, the relevant piece of information depending upon the worry specified by the context. 32 See Austin (1961, fn. 1 on p. 76). Also Braine suggests that the threshold varies with the .sort of proposition in question (in Braine 1971, pp. 41-63). See also Dretske (1981, pp. 132-33).

REFERENCES Annis, D.: 1978, 'A Contextual Theory of Epistemic Justification', American Philosophical Quarterly IS, 213-19. Austin, J. L.: 1961, 'Other Minds', in his Philosophical Papers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 44-84. Austin, J. L.: 1962, Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Ayer, A. J.: 1970, 'Has Austin Refuted the Sense-datum Theory?', in his Metaphysics and Common Sense, Freeman, Cooper & Co., San Francisco, pp. 127-30. Braine, D.: 1971, 'The Nature of Knowledge', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 72, 41-63. Cowey, A.: 1991, 'Grasping the Essentials', Nature 349, 102-03. Dretske, F. I.: 1969, Seeing and Knowing, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Dretske, F. I.: 1971, 'Conclusive Reasons', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49, 1-22. Dretske, F. I.: 1981, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Bradford BookstMIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Ebersole, F.: 1972, 'Saying and Meaning', in A. Ambrose and M. Lazerowitz (eds.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy and Language, Humanities Press, New York, pp. 186-221. Feldman, R.: 1985, 'Reliability and Justification', The Monist 68, 159-74. Hanfling, O.: 1988, 'A Situational Account of Knowledge', The Monist 68, 40-56. Harman, G.: 1973, Thought, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Harrison, J.: 1962, 'Knowing and Promising', Mind 71,443-57. Lehrer, K. and T. Paxon, Jr.: 1969, 'Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief', Journal of Philosophy 66, 225-37. Pitcher, G.: 1971, A Theory of Perception, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Pollock, J. L.: 1974, Knowledge and Justification, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Warnock, G. J.: 1962, 'Claims to Knowledge', Proceedings of the AristoteIian Society, Suppl. 36, 19-32.

R E L A T I V I T Y OF P E R C E P T U A L K N O W L E D G E

169

Welbourne, M.; 1979, 'The Transmission of Knowledge', Philosophical Quarterly 29, 19. Department of Philosophy Lawrence University Appleton, WI 54912 U.S.A.